Chapter III - Willing as a Reaction to External Conditions
4. External Factors and Their Relationship to the Will
4.4. Husserl’s Insights
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…when the fulfillment of a desire lies in the future and has to take the time factor into account is practical reason needed and stimulated by it. In the case of incontinence, it is the force of desire for what is close at hand that leads to incontinence, and here practical reason will intervene out of concern for future consequences.126
Here we can see how Arendt connects the desire, the future and practical reason.
For the purposes of current discussion, we may consider Arendt’s “desire” to mean the will. Then what she says may be rephrased as follows: the will is “initiated” or “moved”
by some attraction to something, which is either close at hand, or which is potentially within reach of a human being through some kind of planning (i.e. deliberation about future acts and outcomes), which may be done by the “practical mind.” In other words, some external appearance or reality, which either exists in present (and may have consequences for the future), or is not yet existent but is potentially feasible and may
“exist” in future – such external “reality” is subject to processing by the practical mind and become an object of “desire” or attraction, and thus may initiate our will (i.e. make us willing some object).
The above described mechanism is the essence of will’s relationship to external factors. Thus, Arendt provides us with the most important intuition in this respect. The only extra work to be done is to clarify and systematize some aspects of this relationship and to avoid using the notion of “desire,” which is not appropriate for expressing will’s attraction to something, since “desire” undermines freedom, which is the essential characteristic of will. This claim about will’s freedom has not yet been proven or argued for, this will be the task of a later Chapter.
4.4. Husserl’s Insights
126 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. P. 58.
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Husserlian methodology will certainly help us answer the first question.
Regarding the natural influences, much of which come from without (i.e. external world) and their influences in the spiritual realm Husserl says:
In the sphere of senses, in the sphere of the basis, grasped as extensively as possible, we have associations, perseverances, determining tendencies, etc. These
“make” the constitution of nature, but they even extend further, since this constitution is also there for spirits: all life of the spirit is permeated by the
“blind” operation of associations, drives, feelings which are stimuli for drives and determining grounds for drives, tendencies, which emerge in obscurity, etc., all of which determine the subsequent course of consciousness according to “blind”
rules.127
In the above quoted passage Husserl indicates that there is a sphere of factors, which may exert a “blind” (i.e. not sanctioned by reason) influence on human Ego, and this influence may be exerted both on the natural and on spiritual aspects of the Ego.
Husserl’s methodology will help us clarify how this influence is exerted and whether the spiritual Ego is in possession of some factors, which may condition such an external influence from within the Ego.
It will certainly be possible also use Husserlian phenomenological method to analyze Hannah Arendt’s own reflection on the influence of external factors on human will, which is often driven by some “gap” between the actual and the desired state of things.
For Husserl one of the functions of the “faculty” of will is that it may immediately make Body move freely. Husserl indicates that:
127 Husserl, Edmund. Ideas II. P. 289.
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Body ( …the thing that has a stratum of localized sensations) is an organ of the will, the one and only Object which, for the will of my pure Ego, is moveable immediately and spontaneously and is a means for producing a mediate spontaneous movement in other things…128
Husserl expresses a very important idea that human body is also an object of the will. Moreover, it is “an organ of the will,” that means that it is through the body that will may manifest itself and reach its goals. Will and body are related “immediately,”
without any other media. In this case Husserl’s notion of the body being “an organ of the will” helps us overcome some of Arendt’s difficulties, namely the separation between the internal life of the mind and the world of appearances. Husserl gives us a clue: our body is both internal and “external” to us, since it is an immediate organ of our mind, at the same time, our body belongs to the world of appearances and is “outside”
of our mind. Our body lives by its own principles, which are different from the principles of the life of the mind.
However, similarly to Arendt Husserl limits will to be directed only towards external activity. This will be reconsidered and criticized in detail in the following Chapter, which will be dedicated to the internal factors in relationship to will and the principles, which govern them.
With respect to the body and its relationship to the will Husserl adds the following propositions:
It is in virtue of these free acts that, as we saw earlier, there can be constituted for this Ego, in manifold series of perceptions, an Object-world, a world of spatial-corporeal things (the Body as thing included)… The Ego has the
“faculty” (the “I can”) to freely move this Body – i.e., the organ in which it is articulated – and to perceive an external world by means of it.129
128 Husserl, Edmund. Ideas II. Pp. 159-160.
129 Husserl, Edmund. Ideas II. Pp. 159-160.
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Here we can see that Husserl also supports freedom and spontaneity of acts, which are inherent to the will. He also explicitly states that the body is “the organ in which it [i.e. the will, K.C.] is articulated.” However, he does not say with respect to what the body moves freely. Is it with respect to other Bodies, or with respect to the causal chains, which rule in the world of appearances? A body cannot be free with respect to the laws of gravitation, it may also not be free with respect to the unwilled impulses, which a body gets either from external factors or from the factors internal to the body itself (i.e. the nerve system, etc.). It seems that Husserl is speaking about the freedom of the body with respect to the necessary causal chains, which rule in the world of appearances. If so, his claim is partially true: human will makes us free from some causal chains, but it does not free us from all of the causal chains. It is also erroneous to suppose that the world of appearances is ruled by the necessary causal chains. It will be shown later in this Chapter, that most of events in the world happen not due to some necessary external causal chains of events.
Another important intuition of Edmund Husserl is his distinction between spirit and body. The German philosophical term “spirit” (“Geist” in German) is often translated by the English word “mind” due to the direct relevance of “Geist” to human mental abilities and activity. However, such relevance does not mean that “Geist” and
“mind” have identical meaning and are interchangeable. “Mind” is concerned with mental activity, while the term “Geist” is introduced to describe phenomena of a different kind and obeying different laws from those, which apply to the world of
“bodies.”
“Geist” is a fundamental philosophical concept, which describes reality of certain nature, while “mind”, even though it may also function as a philosophical concept, is nevertheless a term, which is more related to human cognition and consciousness. It should be noted that Arendt’s thought is influenced by the German conception of
“Geist,” and when she speaks of “mind,” she often implies aspects, which pertain to
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“Geist.” This is evident, for example, from her conception of “autonomous mental faculties,” which pertain to the life of the mind.
It should be noted that this Chapter’s discussion on “external” factors includes phenomena, which belong both to the realm of “Geist” and to the realm of “bodies,”
since both of these realms may exist outside the perceiving subject.
Husserl’s distinction between “Geist” and “body” enables us to begin considering various aspects of external reality, which will be discussed in the following sections. In the next Chapter we will also discuss some internal factors, and after that we will be able to consider Husserl’s intuition that human Ego may be attracted more towards “Geist” or more towards “Body.” This will be important in our discussion on freedom of human will and action, which will take place in the next two Chapters.
It is now possible to consider various types of external factors in a more detail, especially in their relationship to the willing, to volitions and to the object of willing, which are constructed by the mind.